GIven the interest in all things social I'm surprised the Google Social Search announcement hasn't got more coverage. Giving Google access to your social networks will enable the search results to show relevant information posted by your friends - across Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Yelp etc (although no mention of Facebook so we'll assume that's a no)

The local aspect is very interesting when we think about mobile - another example of mobile and social coming together.

One of the many great speakers at this weeks Zeitgeist Europe was Jared Cohen from the US Secretary of State office. His panel was all about citizen politics and covered the way new media was being used by activists.When talking about his time in Iran whilst a student he mentioned that he learnt young people used bluetooth to find others who shared their political beliefs. When asked whether they were worried about the secret police he was told no-one over 30 knows what Bluetooth is. You can read more about this here.Whilst bluetooth isn't that fashionable any more - and there are some issues on privacy - it's another great example of how people dictate what works and what doesn't.Back in 2002 we wanted to use bluetooth for the COI sex lottery campaign - tagline "Don't play the sex lottery. Use a condom."
- and we came up with the idea of going to TigerTiger on Valentines Day and using bluetooth to 'drop' that line on peoples phone - emulating the alarming ease with which you can pick up something nasty. Unfortunately the client said no - but they did let us do our most successful viral ever - the 12 STIs of Christmas; over 2 million views in the days before YouTube

Those nice people at Contagious have allowed me to share the article on Apps I wrote for their latest issue.Download Apps - Contagious march 09As with anything moving as fast as apps it's already a little outdated - the founder of Dodgeball ( which I mention) has now launched foursquare and a number of the gaps I discuss have been filled.But I remain convinced that apps ( be they on Facebook, iPhone or anywhere else )are a major opportunity for brands and will be a significant factor for some time yet.

Twitter has announced a deal with Vodafone allowing UK users to receieve twitter updates by SMS for free. And sending tweets will be charged as a normal SMS.This gets Twitter back to where it was a few months ago, but back then it had a very small userbase. Now its growing so quickly we think the ability to SMS makes a big difference.Increasingly we see the balkanisation of digital ( focusing on search ( paid and organic), display, social, mobile etc etc) as a barrier to really smart marketing online. The internet is the internet and all the different things that can be done are connected and interdependent; for example all our work shows the best way to calculate the ROI on social is to look at the effect on ogranic search)So this ability to tweet from any phone has a democratising and liberating effect - and we expect it to fuel even faster growth of twitter in this market.Anything social needs a mobile element and anything mobile needs a social element.

Whilst everyone now recognises that Obama gave us politics 2.0, fewer people are thinking through how charities can benefit from rise of social media.

The huge potential of online donations is an obvious benefit but we also see that the transparency of social media can be a big differentiator - especially as many charities now behave in rather an unpleasant way. How many times do you need to dodge chuggers on our high streets? How much dull DM do we have to receive? And how many textbook DR ads do we need to see?

One charity that is actively engaging with social media - and using it as part of the product rather than just as a marketing tool - is Child's i Foundation.

Their new blog starts to tell their story, and we think its a story worth following - so we're helping them where we can.

Another charity thats using a smart approach is the Fight for Life appeal. An old friend Malcolm Green has created a really moving film that is a sort of mash up of a charity ad, a documentary and a pop video - which works incredibly well - all promoted through Facebook and You Tube.
Both charities are worthy of your attention - and your money.

One of the interesting people I met in LA was Oliver from Digisynd - and one of the most exciting things we talked about was their new approach to advertising in video. As a part of Disney, these guys have access to lots of talent and they have used the new video from the wildy popular Jonas Brothers to develop a very interesting marketing approach for Office Max.

This preview or trailer for the video reached 370k views within a couple of days - as well as 6000 comments - and the actual video is expected to get as many as 70 million views. Office Max have a presence on the trailer and on the video which feels more like brand curated content than advertising - and a call to action that will drive an awful lot of store traffic.

Is this approach better or worse than actual advertising? Could this be a way to get real scale on social media? And what's the view from YouTube - do they demand a revenue share?

I came across this video from a project we did in late 2000 for Teletext. Ignoring the hyping of the client it's interesting just how much of this stuff is realistic - and there is even some stuff that feels like brand utility.

Other than the references to Leeds United, most of it still seems plausible.

I don't like to do too much self congratulatory stuff here, but even if this wasn't a MindShare project it would be worth a mention.The big question mark over branded content is whether it is as good as the "real thing". We asked Kangeroo if they would carry the programming we create for our brands, and their response was - "if it's good enough."The In the Motherhood property we developed for Sprint and Suave ( a Unilever brand) has been a big success by any criteria, so we were confident it was good enough. But we now have the ultimate accolade - ABC have finally announced what we've known for a while - they are commissioning 13 TV episodes based on the idea.

ABC has handed out a 13-episode order to a comedy series based on the
online series that stars Chelsea Handler, Leah Remini and Jenny
McCarthy as three mothers and girlfriends whose exploits are based on
real-life stories of moms across the country.

MindShare's David Lang and Peter Tortorici will be Exec Producers and Suave and Sprint, which partnered with MindShare for the MSN-hosted
Web series, will also be involved in the ABC offshoot.